US President Donald Trump announced that he had reached an agreement in principle with kremlin leader vladimir putin, according to which "land swaps" should take place between Ukraine and russia, and he sees a chance that Ukraine will refuse such an agreement.
The White House leader said this in an interview with Fox News.
The interview with host Sean Hannity took place in the negotiating room where Trump had previously met with Putin, immediately after a press conference at which Trump and Putin refused to answer questions from journalists. Instead, the US president chose to communicate with a TV presenter loyal to him.
In this interview, Trump emphasized several times that the main issue now is for Ukraine to accept the agreements he reached with putin.
"Ukraine has to agree. President Zelenskyy has to agree. Now it's really up to President Zelenskyy to get it [peace deal] done, and I would also say the European nations, they have to get involved a little bit. But it's up to President Zelenskyy. And if they'd like, I'll be at that next meeting," the White House leader emphasized.
Trump did not want to name the agreements himself, which could cause problems in their approval by Ukraine, but he clarified to the TV presenter whether his information on this difficult point was correct.
"There's going to be some land swaps, there will be more Russian territory than there had been, and what Ukraine needs desperately are security measures that won't be NATO-related," Sean Hannity described it and asked Trump to clarify whether this information was correct.
Donald Trump answered in the affirmative.
"Those are points that we negotiated and those are points that we largely have agreed on, actually… We're pretty close to a deal. Now look, Ukraine has to agree to it, maybe they'll say 'no'," he said.
Trump assessed the possibility of concluding a deal as "50 to 50" and separately reported what signal he would send to Volodymyr Zelenskyy during a conversation with him.
"Gotta make a deal. Look, Russia is a very big power, and they (Ukrainians - Ed.) are not. They're great soldiers," Trump described what he would tell the Ukrainian President.
The interview did not provide any details on the scope and outlines of these "land swaps." Zelenskyy previously emphasized that the issue of territories is defined in the Ukrainian constitution.
Who we are: About us, Contacts. How we write news and our principles: Editorial code. We did our best. If you found this valuable – please support us.
To request a correction, please send an email.